In a recent retail store environment, there have been cases where the number of clerks is insufficient due to compression of labor cost and a decrease in population and where the goods cannot be sufficiently displayed for reasons of small area of a store. For reducing the number of clerks or shortening waiting time at the cashier counter, introduction of a self-service POS device in addition to a clerk POS device has been progressing. However, it is costly for a store to purchase two POS devices, i.e. the clerk POS device and the self-service POS device. Further, this requires the installation space to be twice or more and thus does not match the store environment. Moreover, in a time zone when there is no clerk in the store, the clerk POS device is unusable, i.e. being an unused installation, and thus is wasted.
As a technique for solving such a problem, there is, for example, a checkout system disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. 2003-85647. This conventional system switches between a self-service POS device and a clerk POS device.
However, since this conventional system is configured such that a scanner and an LCD are movable independently of each other, the system configuration is complicated. Further, since two actions are required for switching between the self-service POS device and the clerk POS device, the speed for the switching is slow. Further, a receipt printer is required for printing receipts, but is not provided in this conventional system. Moreover, POP advertisements or the like are normally posted in stores, but, according to this prior art, since the size of the system is large and driving portions are located away from each other, it is not possible to place POP advertisements or the like therearound.